<p>#OBTChallenge Day 2 In case you didn&#8217;t see yesterday&#8217;s post, my new goal on the blog for a while is to post one &#8220;bright thing&#8221; every day, in the spirit of lighting a candle when things seem dark. Today&#8217;s post features the music of Impressionist composer Claude Debussy. This is my recording of the first &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2020/01/09/one-bright-thing-day-2/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-read

<p>#OBTChallenge Day 1 To bring in 2020, I&#8217;m repurposing the blog for a while. Let&#8217;s see how long I keep it going&#8230; It&#8217;s already a tough year. A lot of us are probably struggling with more anxiety than usual because of the headlines, especially the news out of Australia and Iran. January is often a &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2020/01/08/a-new-daily-challenge-one-bright-thing/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-re

<p>Merry Christmas! I sure didn’t think I was going to write a blogpost today, but the brain came alive this morning with some percolating ideas… Christmas can be a strange day. We know about the amazing pressure and busyness leading up to it: only X more shopping days! What’s on your dinner menu? Did you &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/12/25/seasons-greetings-and-thoughts/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Season&#8217;

<p>Thanks for visiting again! Today&#8217;s post (I think) will be short: an apology for the unintended hiatus over the past couple of weeks, and a note about the upcoming (probable) hiatus until the New Year. I didn&#8217;t plan to miss last week&#8217;s post, but a pre-Thanksgiving cold has been hanging around, making any extra work &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/12/10/3284/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Old into

<p>Yesterday I wrote a little over eight hundred words on what I think will be my next book (Number Three 😊). This feels like a big step in the right direction, because part of me has been avoiding writing, and/or struggling with it big time, for a while. If you’ve been following the blog, you &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/11/19/back-to-work/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Back to Work</span></a></p>

<p>Thanks for visiting, as always! Today I&#8217;m sharing another teaser from a new project I&#8217;m working on: a collection of very short, fable-like stories about the experiences artists face. As a short intro, Vera is an artist, in any discipline you&#8217;d like to imagine &#8211; whatever resonates most with you. Lia is one of her &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/11/12/teaser-2/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">T

<p>Apologies for the lack of post last week. After Tuesday went by, I thought maybe Wednesday or Thursday I would put up a late one, but then it was the end of the week and I still hadn&#8217;t gotten my act together. 😉 But I&#8217;m glad I waited, because this week&#8217;s post probably needed the &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/11/05/buried-meteor/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Buried Meteor</span></a></p>

<p>I didn&#8217;t think I was going to write a post this week. My husband and I are spending a couple of days at the coast, so I&#8217;d planned on a blog hiatus until next week, but somehow this evening &#8211; as I&#8217;m sitting in the living room at our rental, listening to the ocean outside &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/10/22/coming-back-changed/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Coming Back Changed</span></a></p

<p>Thanks for visiting, as always! This week I&#8217;ve started a new project, and thought I&#8217;d post a short teaser from it here. The very short story below is going to be part of a larger collection, all dealing with the experiences and challenges artists face. Quick explanatory note: Vera is an artist; her discipline is &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/10/15/teaser/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Teaser</span></

<p>This one is for my fellow artists, especially the writers&#8230; A number of years ago now, I read an article by a writer whose name I&#8217;m sorry to say I don&#8217;t remember. In the article, this writer was talking about the experience of getting her first book published, and all the challenges and setbacks that &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/10/08/why-imagine/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Why Imagine?</spa

<p>Two blogposts, two weeks in a row! Maybe I&#8217;m getting better at this&#8230; 😉 Last week I wrote about anxiety, as related to the performance I was scheduled to give that afternoon. I&#8217;m glad to report that &#8211; as was maybe expected &#8211; the performance went fine, and my well-seasoned performer training kicked in and &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/10/01/keep-on-keeping-on/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader

<p>Thank you for visiting the blog again. Trying to stay a bit more reliably up and running! 🙂 This afternoon, I&#8217;m giving a lecture-performance about my book To Love A Stranger. Before I started having major anxiety struggles this summer, this kind of performance was a little nerve-racking, but mostly no sweat. Today, I&#8217;m considerably more &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/09/24/trusting-it/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="scre

<p>Apologies for the longer-than-expected silence on the blog. If you&#8217;ve been following it, you know it&#8217;s been a pretty challenging summer. As the fall routine starts up again, I&#8217;m planning to get back to regular posts, as much as possible! This week&#8217;s post will be rather short, and mostly consists of a question (more on &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/09/10/how-can-i-help/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-re

<p>Following up on the very short post of a couple of weeks ago: today marks the launch of a project I’ve had in mind for a long time. 😊 Musical Meditations is a new, fully self-guided course on my website. It combines three elements: musical inspiration and space for journaling; features on four major composers &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/08/07/musical-meditations-launch/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Musical M

<p>Today&#8217;s very short post is only to share that something new is coming soon to the website. A project for writers, music enthusiasts, and anyone looking for inspiration for their creative work, or simply something new to relax and open the mind, will be live most likely within the next week. This project has been &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/07/23/stay-tuned/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Stay Tuned&#8230;

<p>If you’ve been following the blog over the past few weeks, you know that one of the big things I’ve been writing about is recent experiences with anxiety. While panic attacks are familiar territory for me, the higher level of pretty-much-constant anxiety I’ve been living under is a new and highly unwelcome situation. I know &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/07/16/growing-pains/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Growing

<p>The blog is late again this week: it’s been a very busy teaching week, which has helped with my need to keep my mind busy. 😊 I’ve been leading a summer writing workshop with Writopia Lab in Washington DC. Writopia is a terrific organization that works with young writers, ages 7 through high school, and &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/07/10/musical-meditation/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Musical Meditation</span

<p>My new post is a little late this week: it took an extra day for me to gear up and put some thoughts in order. These past couple of weeks, but this past week in particular, have been incredibly challenging. I’m writing about it as a shout-out to all artists who deal with depression and &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/07/03/centering/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Centering</span></a></p>

<p>As promised, new content on the blog today. Last week, my husband and I went on vacation to north-central Pennsylvania. We were in an area known for its beautiful night skies: we rented a cabin close to Cherry Springs State Park, which is actually an international dark-sky park where amateur stargazers can take in their &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/06/25/how-long-will-you-let-them/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text"

<p>Re-posting another &#8220;old&#8221; favorite today. Life has been hectic lately, but also, this post helped me in the writing and I wanted to share it again. The blog will be on hiatus next week. It&#8217;ll return &#8211; with a brand-new post 🙂 &#8211; on 6/25. &#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;- There’s a wonderful passage in the novel Small Gods, by Terry &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2019/06/11/re-post-one-equals-fifty-one/" class="more-lin